Technical post

This is a technical post.  I must figure out how to post a blog using a keyboard that folds in thirds to something the size of a postcard.  If I can’t do this at my own dining room table, I surely will be unable to do it on the run.

This is all part of the Camino, as surely as arrival in Santiago will be, if I get there, as purchasing the tickets was, as setting off for the airport in the dark of Sunday morning will be. Testing the kit.  Packing, repacking, borrowing kit, filling in online forms, collecting documentation, anticipating all manner of trouble in the hope that anticipated troubles, despairing of their full potential for wreaking dismay through that forethought might give up and leave me in peace.

So is emptying the fridge. The menu gets stranger as time grows short.  Suffice it to say that I had a lot of onions for supper, and will have a lot of slightly old Brussels sprouts for tomorrow’s lunch.  The curious consequences of the Camino slowly taking over life.

There is a long to-do list on the whiteboard bolted to the dining room wall (a decor fashion adopted in covid times for zoom collaboration). The majority of entries now have got cheerful red ticks by them. 

As the ticked entries outnumber the unticked, my mouth goes dry, and the catechism that has been repeating at increasing frequency over the last year repeats again.

Why are you doing this?

Because I can. 

(There is a backstory here.  For two years of my life, in my forties, for no reason anyone could find, I couldn’t walk without the help of sticks. A change of diet, anti-inflammatories, a love affair with running, and hope got me back on my feet independent of sticks. The cogency of “because I can” only becomes apparent when one has experienced “I can’t”.)

Are you really strong and fit enough to undertake this?

I don’t know, I will find out.

What will you do if you get into difficulties?

I will trust to the Lord and the kindness of those around me. 

And perhaps that is the most important goal of this Camino, practicing that trust. There is a lot of uncertainty, a lot that I am scared of.  I have prepared as well as I can. (I reached the final checkpoint in the Duolingo Spanish course just this morning.) Beyond that, I will trust my God. One way or another He will keep me in his hand.

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